CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
108 km from Redruth to Redruth, about 2 h 02 of riding. It goes by way of Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts, St Just Mining District and back through Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
The hills between Redruth and Truro are some of the most worked ground in Europe. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Gwennap was said to be the richest square mile of mining country in the world, with copper and tin coming out of shafts so close together that the engine houses seem to stand shoulder to shoulder. Today the chimneys and roofless buildings stand in gorse and bracken, and the red-brown streams and spoil heaps tell you what lay underneath. The area is part of the Cornish Mining World Heritage Site, and the village of St Day, with about seven hundred people, sits at its centre, with a fine ruined church in the middle of a green.
Read the complete Gwennap Mining District write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Gwennap Mining District is where the day begins. Next is Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts.
Tregonning Hill is a low, rounded granite dome above Germoe, and on its slopes in the middle of the eighteenth century a Plymouth chemist named William Cookworthy found white clay of a quality that Europe had never produced. He recognised it as kaolin, the secret of Chinese porcelain, and the find began an industry that eventually shifted to the larger deposits around St Austell. The ground around Tregonning and Gwinear is a landscape of old tin and copper workings, engine houses, abandoned stacks and small fields enclosed by stone hedges. The whole Cornish mining landscape was listed by UNESCO in 2006 and these districts are part of it.
Read the complete Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts comes up about 27 km into the recorded legs. Next is St Just Mining District.
Out at the very end of Cornwall, where the land runs out in granite cliffs above the Atlantic, the coast between St Just and Pendeen is studded with the ruined engine houses of tin and copper mines. Some of them stand right on the cliff edge, their tall chimneys silhouetted against the sea, and the shafts below ran out under the ocean floor, so deep that miners claimed they could hear boulders rolling on the seabed above them during storms. This is the St Just Mining District, one of the most dramatic parts of the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage site.
Read the complete St Just Mining District write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 53 km into the recorded legs you reach St Just Mining District. Next is back through Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts, late in the day. Next is Gwennap Mining District.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Gwennap Mining District write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Gwennap Mining District. That is the ride.
Gwennap Mining District → Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts → St Just Mining District is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
St Just Mining District → back through Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Tregonning and Gwinear Mining Districts → Gwennap Mining District is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.